Cash flow includes the movement of cash over a particular time period within a business or enterprise. The calculation of cash flow may be used as one measure to gauge financial health of the business. Managers in charge of cash flow management may use various tools to assist in making decisions involving cash flow.
Businesses and other organizations often require a supply of cash to fund transactions such as providing change for customer purchases. Based on the transactions that take place, the business or organizations may become depleted in one or more denominations of paper or coin money and may have a surplus in other denominations. As such, the business or organization may request a change order to obtain money in the desired denominations and may deposit the unneeded surplus denominations.
Multiple businesses, for example, such as in a shopping mall may each desire to have change orders prepared to stock each cash register for the next day's business. However, within a mall, there may be a limited supply of cash handling devices to serve the businesses and customers. Even if there are numerous cash handling devices, a business might not know which of the cash handling devices has enough cash to fulfill a change order. Searching for a cash handling device with enough change to fulfill a requested order is inefficient.